06-02-2026

Mrs. Piett’s Dishes 


Mrs. Piett’s Dishes 

I bought this dish and a whole set that match it at Mrs. Piett’s auction sale in Houghton in the late 1970’s. I was just a girl and I thought these were the prettiest dishes I’d ever seen. Mrs. Piett’s maiden name was Ella Williams and she had married Roy Piett on February 18th, 1914. They farmed in Houghton until Roy died of a heart failure in 1948. They never had any children.  


I remember the clear summer day of the sale when all their possessions were haphazardly laid out on the ground in their backyard or on tables in the front yard. The house, as I remember it, was a whitewashed wooden house that seemed old and weathered – very little white paint remained. Over in the yard, there was a mountain of hand-woven rag rugs that had been ripped from the floors. The auctioneer kept trying to sell them, but no one was interested. 

What I most wanted then was these dishes and I bid on them at the urging of my mischief-loving step-grandfather, Gord Philp. When the auctioneer got to the dishes, I bravely stuck my hand up as high as I could and then no one else made a bid. I got them for $5 and then I yelled out my Dad’s number. From elsewhere in the crowd Dad said, ‘hey wait a minute!’ Everyone laughed but I still got the dishes.  

I know now, but did not know then, that Mrs. Piett was a cousin to my great-grandmother, Annie Mae Williams - they were both great-granddaughters of the Loyalist, Jonathan Williams. I recently found a mention of Mrs. Piett in the online Simcoe Reformer. The story said that on her 86th birthday her niece, Judy Williams, surprised her by bringing her a chicken dinner and birthday cake. I wonder if Mrs. Piett and her niece ate that birthday dinner on these dishes? I hope so, but the Reformer didn’t say. Mrs. Piett died a few years later on February 29th, 1980, in Simcoe Hospital and she is buried in Clear Creek Cemetery.  

When I posted this story on Facebook some years ago other people added their memories of Mrs. Piett. Brad Brown, whose parents ran the Clear Creek General Store, remembered that every Saturday morning Mrs. Piett would phone the store with a short grocery list for us to deliver. “I remember it always began with 6 oranges,” he wrote. And Carolyn Nethercott passed along the sad story of Roy Piett’s passing. “Roy and Ella were in attendance at the wedding of my husband's cousin, Harold Nethercott and Marie Lingham, at 1st Houghton Baptist Church near Clear Creek. On their way home Roy got the car stuck in a snowbank. In trying to get out, he suffered a heart attack. The groom, Harold Nethercott and his bride, Marie loaded him into their car and took him to the doctor in Port Rowan. Unfortunately, Roy had already passed....an event the bride and groom never forgot.” 

I’ve moved these dishes to all the places I’ve lived - Nova Scotia, Yukon, Saskatchewan - places she likely never saw. Happily, the dishes, and I, now live about 7 miles away from where that auction sale took place roughly 50 years ago. Mrs. Piett’s house has been gone many years now, replaced by a power relay station for the wind turbines, but she is warmly remembered and her dishes are safe with me. 

Heather Smith